New releases opening this week: 42, Trance, Room 237, and more

When you've got a story like Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, maybe the best move is to put the story out there and get out of the way. And that's what 42 does - well, mostly. (Sportswriter Wendell Smith serves up a huge gaffe at the outset, saying that the results-based assessment provided by a ballgame box score is a proof of democracy. No, silly, it's a proof of meritocracy. Proof of democracy would have been if the players' petition to keep Robinson off the field had gotten enough votes and forced the team's owner to comply.) You wanna jaw about its meaning? You go right ahead.

Speaking of jawing about meaning, Room 237 is all about people who know what Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is really about. Astonishingly, they are not all in perfect agreement. Scott liked it. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Someday, a film studies major is going to write an essay comparing Danny Boyle's hypnotic dreamscapes in Trance with Dali's surrealist dream in Spellbound. And the teacher will give that film studies major a failing grade, just because.

Gimme the Loot is a film about taggers who are not Banksy-style street-art impresarios. Rather, they are taggers. I have high hopes, if only because it sounds like it has a measure of urgency and fun.

The Company You Keep is All the President's Men meets The Weather Underground. Scott will review it soon, I'm told.

Over at the Digital Gym, Woody Allen gets a big fat love letter from a pretty French woman in Paris, Manhattan.

Scary Movie V is a movie that is coming out. It's ahead of its time, really - sort of like Tyler Perry. The critic is not necessary for such a film because its audience knows it and it knows its audience - sort of like Google.